“What is a brittle star?” Colonel Birch asked. “I have not heard of such a thing.”

“It’s shaped like a star, sir,” Mary explained. “The centre is marked with the outline of a flower with five petals, and a long, wavy leg extends off each petal. It’s hard to find one with all five legs intact. I’ve had a collector ask specially for one that’s not broken. That’s why we’ve come this far. Normally I stay between Lyme and Charmouth, by Black Ven and off the ledges by town.”

“Is that where you have found the ichthyosauri?”

“There, and one along Monmouth Beach, just to the west of Lyme. But there might be some along here. I just haven’t looked here for them. Have you seen an ichthyosaurus, sir?”

“No, but I’ve read about them, and seen drawings.”

I snorted.

“I am here for the summer to expand my fossil collection, Mary, and I hope you will be able to help-There!” Colonel Birch stopped. I turned to look. He reached down and picked up a bit of crinoid.

“Very good, sir,” Mary said. “I was just going to have a look at that, but you beat me to it.”

He held it out to her. “It is for you, Mary. I would not deprive you of such a lovely specimen. It is my gift to you.”

It was indeed a fine specimen, fanning out like the lily it was named for. “Oh no, sir, it’s yours,” Mary said. “You found it. I could never take it from you.”

Colonel Birch took her hand, laid the crinoid in it and closed her fingers around it. “I insist, Mary.” He held his hand over her fist and looked at her. “Did you know crinoids are not plants as they appear, but creatures?”

“Really, sir?” Mary was staring into his eyes. Of course she knew about crinoids. I had taught her.

I stepped forward. “Colonel Birch, I must ask you to show proper respect or I shall require that you leave us.”

Colonel Birch dropped his hand. “My apologies, Miss Philpot. The discovery of fossils excites me in ways I find hard to control.”

“Control it you must, sir, or you will lose the privileges you seek.”

He nodded and fell back to a respectful distance. We walked in silence for a time. But Colonel Birch could not be quiet for long, and soon he and Mary were lagging behind while he asked her about the fossils she preferred, her method of hunting, even her thoughts on what the ichthyosaurus was. “I don’t know, sir,” she said of her most spectacular find. “It seems the ichie’s got a bit of crocodile in it, some lizard, some fish. And a bit of something all its own. That’s what’s difficult, that bit. How it fits in.”

“Oh, I expect your ichthyosaurus has a place in Aristotle’s Great Chain of Being,” Colonel Birch said.

“What’s that, sir?”

I tutted. She didn’t need him to explain it, for I had described the theory to Mary myself. She was flirting with him. Of course he loved telling her what he knew. Men do.

“The Greek philosopher Aristotle suggested that all creatures could be placed along a scale, from the lowest plants up to the perfection that is man, in a chain of creation. So your ichthyosaurus may fall between a lizard and a crocodile in the chain, for instance.”

“That is very interesting, sir.” Mary paused. “But that don’t explain about the bit of the ichie that’s like nothing else, that don’t fit in with the categories. Where does that fit in the chain, if it’s different from everything else?”

Colonel Birch suddenly stopped, squatted and picked up a stone. “Is this-Oh, no, it’s not. My mistake.” He threw the stone into the water.

I smiled. He might dazzle with his handsome head of hair, but his grasp of knowledge was superficial, and Mary had picked it apart.

“What about you, Miss Philpot? What do you like to collect?” In two lively steps Colonel Birch had caught up with me, escaping Mary’s awkward question. I did not want his attention, for I was not sure I could bear it, but I could not be impolite.

“Fish,” I answered as briefly as I could.

“Fish?”

Though I did not want to converse with him, I could not help showing off a bit of my knowledge. “Primarily Eugnathus, Pholidophorus, Dapedius, and Hybodus-the last is an ancient shark,” I added as his face went blank at the Latin. “Those are the genus names, of course. The different species have not yet been identified.”

“Miss Philpot has a big collection of fossil fish at her home,” Mary put in. “People come and look all the time, don’t they, Miss Elizabeth?”

“Really? Fascinating,” Colonel Birch murmured. “I shall be sure to visit as well and see your fish.”

He was careful, so I could never accuse him of rudeness, but his tone bore a trace of sarcasm. He preferred the bold ichthyosaurus to the quiet fish. But then, most do. They do not understand that the clear shape and texture of a fish, with its overlapping scales, its dimpled skin, and its shapely fins, all make up a specimen of great beauty-beautiful because it is plain and definite. With his gleaming buttons and thrusting hair, Colonel Birch could never comprehend such subtlety.

“You’d best move along,” I snapped, “else the tide will catch us out before we reach Seatown. Mary, if you don’t stop talking you’ll never find a brittle star for your collector.”

Mary scowled, but I was done tolerating Colonel Birch. I turned and strode towards Seatown, blind to any fossils underfoot.

Colonel Birch was to stay for several weeks to build up his collection, taking rooms in Charmouth but coming to Lyme daily. His claim on Mary’s time was sudden and absolute. She went out with him every day. To start with I accompanied them, for even if Mary didn’t, I worried what the town would think. When we three were together I tried to find the comfortable rhythm I had when I was out only with Mary, where we each concentrated on our own hunting and yet felt the reassuring presence of a companion close by. That rhythm was ruined by Colonel Birch, who liked to remain with Mary and talk. It is a testament to her hunting skills that she was able to find anything at all that summer with him babbling at her side. Yet she toler-?flated him. More than tolerated-she doted on him. There was no place for me on the beach with them. I might as well have been an empty crab shell. I went out three times with them, and that was enough.

For Colonel Birch was a fraud. To be accurate, I should say, Lieutenant Colonel Birch was a fraud. That was one of his many petty ruses-leaving off the “Lieutenant” to promote himself higher than he was. Nor did he offer up that he was long retired from the Life Guards, though anyone who knew a bit about them could see he wore the old uniform of long coat and leather breeches rather than the shorter coat and blue-grey pantaloons of the current soldiers. He was happy to bask in the Life Guards’ glory at Waterloo, without having taken part.

Worse, I discovered from those three days on the beach with him that he did not find fossils himself. He did not keep his eyes on the ground as Mary and I did, but searched our faces and followed our gazes so that as we stopped and leaned over, he reached out and picked up what we were looking at before we had time to do so ourselves. He only tried this method with me once before my glare stopped him. Mary was more tolerant, or blinded by her feelings, and let him rob her of many specimens and call them his own finds.

Colonel Birch’s amateurism appalled me. For all his professed interest in fossils, and his supposedly robust military constitution ready for all hardships, he was not a scrabbler in the mud in search of specimens. He found his through his wallet, or his charm, or by picking them off others. He had a fine collection by the end of the summer, but Mary had found and given them to him, or nudged him towards those she had spotted. Like Lord Henley and other men who came to Lyme, he was a collector rather than a hunter, buying his knowledge rather than seeking it with his own eyes and hands. I could not understand how Mary would find him appealing.